Richard,

The Core Team and the Executive Committee are using Groove to manage the event, and the majority of Participant leads are tracking their experiments in a Groove space as well. Yet Groove is not a viable option for all concerned, whether due to cost, policy, hardware or platform, so we'll be replicating a fair amount of Groove-based content out to this website. This site is more than an admin portal; it is a way for us to interact with others not participating directly in the event.

There's a point here worth noting. Based on a number of field deployments, the Strong Angel team has come to the conclusion that we are unlikely to witness -- at least in the near future -- any response to a catastrophic event in which there is a "main" collaboration tool used by the majority of responders. This is particularly true in international settings, where no single organization has sufficient authority to mandate uniform use of a single technology across the many kinds of organizations participating in a response. Every organization -- whether civilian or military -- arrives with the best that they have to offer and the best tools they have available to coordinate their activities. Almost invariably, they discover that while their tools work quite well within the walls of their own organizations, they are not used by others with whom effective collaboration has suddenly become a priority. The need for inclusion of the right people into the response process always trumps the capabilities provided by any specific tool, so users confronted by incompatible collaboration tools typically revert to the lowest common denominator: email. Email, unfortunately, while a reasonably effective communication tool, does not support richly interactive, contextualized work, and these shortcomings are often exacerbated by the operational complexity and information overload that often confront responders. At Strong Angel III, we'll be exploring ways to integrate several collaboration tools in such a way that each organization may continue to use whatever tools makes the most sense for them to use. The theme is '"embracing diversity". Responses will always involve a heterogeneous mix of technologies, and we're looking to find ways to live with it.

Best Regards,

Robert